


Proving a Negative

by Lyrstzha



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Flash Fic, Implied Relationship, Introspection, M/M, Memory Alteration, Tahiti is a Magical Place, clone?, life model decoy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like Phil Coulson's mind is keeping different habits than his body, like the reflexes of his hands and his heart are all out of sync. He's beginning to think something is wrong, but he can only see the shape of what's missing by the hollowed out space it leaves in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proving a Negative

**Author's Note:**

  * For [umbo (shell)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shell/gifts).



Phil Coulson thinks he has forgotten something. It's just a feeling that he has, sometimes, and it's more about what he _doesn't_ do than what he _does_. Like how he feels awkward and wrong when he finds himself sleeping in the middle of the bed instead of on the right side, and he can't shake the feeling that he shouldn't be in that habit, even though he hasn't shared a bed with anyone regularly in years. Or when he moves into his new quarters and automatically puts all his toiletries where they've been going for years, only to get the odd and itchy feeling that they're spread out too much, like he's taken space that doesn't belong to him.

It's like his habits are all wrong. His hands know one thing, and his heart knows another. It's confusing. And how ridiculous would it be to complain to medical that there must be something wrong just because he's acting exactly as he always has when he has this vague sense that he shouldn't be? That sounds utterly crazy.

And then he fumbles a gun that should be almost a part of his own hand, like a normal person without the carefully honed, inculcated reflexes of a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent.

“So,” he says to May in the quiet hum of the cockpit hours later. “this is going to sound a little strange, but we hadn't talked for a while before New York, had we?”

She flicks a glance at him, cool and assessing. “You sent me a message. When I left the field.”

He nods, remembering. “And you never responded.”

Her eyes slide to his briefly again, but she says nothing.

Coulson smiles at her, just a little, because May is still May, and at least that hasn't changed. “But that wasn't talking,” he goes on after a moment. “We hadn't actually caught up on each other's lives in a few years, had we? Not since Istanbul, and that was what, oh-eight?”

May shrugs a little. “It's a busy job. We always catch up eventually.”

“But,” he persists, “my life seems pretty much the way you remember it? Nothing's...missing?”

May actually turns slightly toward him, her brows drawing down, which is as close to being openly alarmed as she gets. “Of course. _This_ has always been your life,” she tilts her head as if to indicate the whole plane behind them. “What would be missing?”

Coulson smiles again, but it's a careful, obscuring smile. “Spent too long in Tahiti, I guess. It's a magical place, but it's a different routine.”

She doesn't look diverted. “You would tell me if something was wrong.” It isn't a question; it doesn't even pretend to be.

“Of course. And there isn't. I know there isn't. Just, do you ever get the feeling that you've forgotten something important?”

May turns away immediately, her gaze shifting to the yawning sky beyond the window. “Not as often as I'd like,” she says evenly.

Coulson leaves her alone after that, and tries to think no more of it. He tries as he wakes up in the morning with his blanket still draped loosely over him as it always is, and has the vaguely confused feeling that he should be cold because he hadn't wrapped the blanket firmly beneath his weight so it couldn't be easily wrenched away. He tries as he goes to sleep at night, taking up too much space in the center of a bed that should be his to dominate. He tries as he touches himself, when working even one finger inside himself takes much more effort than he thinks that it ought to.

And yet his mind is still keeping different habits than his body, because he leaves a silence after Ward says, “Squeeze with an even pressure,” to Skye during target practice, waiting for someone to quip, “That's what she said.” And he's always surprised when his towels are hanging just exactly where they should be, and not in a wet mess on the floor of the shower, where he has never left them himself. There is something that leaves an empty space in his mind which his body doesn't seem to feel.

So Coulson gets a thorough physical. And he's fine. Even May thinks he's fine – just different, just changed by dying. Who wouldn't be? She must be right.

But then Agent Hand says, “Barton and Romanoff never have an extraction plan.” 

And of course at the moment Coulson's absorbed with getting Fitz and Ward extracted safely, and all he has time to do right then is bite back, “They _know_ that going in.” Which is true, and gets to the heart of what is most wrong about this mission. But.

Later, Coulson wants to message Clint and tell him about it. Natasha would just be vaguely incensed, but Clint would think comparing Fitz and Ward to him and Natasha is ridiculously, stupidly funny. _Wrong_ , of course, but _funny_. But he can't; Fury's told him firmly that now isn't the time for the news of his survival to spread. He can't message Clint about anything, especially not something so unimportant as just a story to make him laugh. He can keep getting brief updates from Fury on how Agents Barton and Romanoff are doing, as he has been, but that's it. There can be no talking to Clint, for who knows how long.

And it's then, in the middle of that thought which should be casual, which should mean so much less than everything, that a swell of nameless grief rises to close Coulson's throat. The heaviness of it in his chest aches, and Coulson spends that night sleepless, staring toward the ceiling in the darkness of his quarters. He recalls being shot once, years ago. The bullet had hurt like fire going in, but so much more afterward when the ragged hole it had left was first starting to heal. Coulson knows what a brutally hollowed-out space feels like inside him, and this is it.

There is no more doubt. There is something wrong. There is something missing, something he should remember and doesn't. And he finally has a decent idea where to start looking for that someone.


End file.
